December 2, 2025
Coding’s funeral? Postponed again
A series of vignettes from my childhood and early career
Every decade declares coding dead; commenters say it’s just getting weirder
TLDR: The author recounts decades of “coding is dead” predictions that never came true. Commenters mostly agree: tools like AI and automation shift tasks but don’t erase jobs, and many say the real risk is refusing to learn; some even claim coding is more fun—and more valuable—than ever.
An old-school coder drops a set of mini-stories about decades of “coding is dead” predictions—from a 90s fantasy that business folks would snap software together like LEGOs, to the “Multimedia Age” where sound-and-video CDs were supposed to leave everyone behind, to a 2000 demo of IntelliJ’s magical refactoring that would allegedly replace whole teams. Thirty years later, software is still paying the rent, and the author’s punchline lands: every new tool makes the job different, not extinct.
The comments go full popcorn. JKCalhoun waves a big sign: “The Death of Software Engineering… is greatly exaggerated.” everlier delivers the spiciest thesis: tools don’t end careers, people’s laziness to learn them does, and history keeps looping. fpauser is thrilled that large language models (AI that predicts code) make coding fun again, joking “Real programmers will be gold.” Meanwhile, orwin’s “I automated myself out of a job” turned into more work: onboarding clients and rescuing folks who gave everything on their computers full access—like the chaotic “chmod -R 777 /” oops. The vibe? A mix of gallows humor and resilience: hype cycles flare, memes pop, but coders keep adapting. The crowd’s meme of the day: Coding’s obituary keeps getting retracted. Every time.
Key Points
- •A 1996 prediction claimed OOP and reusable object libraries would end most software engineering jobs.
- •Decades later, the author reports software engineering remains viable despite widespread libraries and open source.
- •The 1990s “multimedia” boom normalized into routine features without collapsing industries or requiring mass reskilling.
- •By 2000, advanced IDE features like inline docs, early error feedback, and refactoring were seen as potential job eliminators.
- •The author contends that new abstractions shift work to higher levels rather than removing the need for programmers.